Biomedical Research

Background: This study aimed to examine the preliminary reliability and validity of a Chinese version of the Ward Organizational Features Scales (C-WOFS).

Methods: An existing English version of the WOFS was adapted. Translation and back-translation were conducted to ensure linguistic consistency and cultural sensitiveness. The C-WOFS comprises six scales including the Scales of Physical Environment of the Ward, Professional Nursing Practice, Professional Working Relationships, Ward Leadership, Nurses’ Influence, and Job Satisfaction. Then a crosssectional survey was conducted, and 1200 nurses were recruited from four general hospitals in two districts of Shanghai, China. 994 of them completed the survey.

Results: Confirmatory factor analysis of the six originally-specified scales indicated a poor fit to the data. A subsequent Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) improved the fit. After EFA, all items in the Scale of Physical Environment of the Ward were retained, and 16 items were removed from the other five scales. Two factors were generated from the original version of one-domain Job Satisfactory Scale, while the domains of the other five scales were the same as those in the original scales. The final version of C-WOFS contained 88 items and 15 subscales, distributed across six scales. The Cronbach’s α for each scale and subscale ranged from 0.71 to 0.94.

Conclusion: The preliminary reliability and validity of the C-WOFS is satisfactory and promising to assess and correlate ward organizational features of hospitals in Mainland China. Further psychometric properties of the C-WOFS will be tested and reported.

Author(s): Qian Wu, Shuying Zhang, Yan Shi, Xiao Sun, Xuhong Mou, Meimei Tian, Cuiping Chen, Jianwen Xu
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